Interview with Roger DeClercq (1922 - ), Urban Exodus: St. Louis Park Oral History Project, Bloomington, Minnesota

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JUNE 19TH, 2012

Interview with Roger DeClercq
Interviewed at his home at 7160 West 113th St., Bloomington, Minn.
Interviewed By Jeff Norman
Date of Interview: June 19, 2012
RD: Roger DeClercq
JN: Jeff Norman
JN: This is Jeff Norman interviewing Roger DeClercq in his home in Bloomington on June 19th, 2012.
First of all, some personal background information. When and where were you born?
RD: I was born in Barrett, Minnesota—small town in west central Minnesota.
JN: In what year?
RD: 1922.
JN: Is that where you grew up?
RD: Yes.
JN: You attended college?
RD: Yes. I went to St. Cloud for two years, when it was, at that time, a teachers’ college. Then I went into the army.
JN: Then what happened, when you came out of the army?
RD: Well, came out of the army and went directly to the University of Minnesota—for two years. Got my bachelors and then started right away getting my masters.
JN: In education?
RD: Yes.
JN: Was there a concentration in theater, for instance, at that point?
RD: I had two majors: one in English and one in speech, with the theater emphasis.
JN: You married when?
RD: In 1944, just maybe three months before I went overseas—World War II.
JN: Do you have children?
RD: Yes, I have three daughters.
JN: Their ages are?
RD: Well, [laughs] I’m not sure of the ages, but they were born in ‘47, ‘50 and ‘57.
JN: You retired in . . . ?
RD: ‘84.
JN: What kinds of things have you been involved in since retiring?
RD: Trying to keep up with about 27 grandchildren. I’ve done a lot of traveling; including biking and hiking out west, in Maryland, and in Missouri, and then quite a bit of traveling overseas in various countries.
JN: Wonderful. Where do your three kids live?
RD: My oldest daughter lives in Indiana; my middle daughter lives in Eden Prairie, and my youngest daughter lives in Mankato.
JN: After you got your masters’ degree . . .
RD: Ok. I think it’s important. I lost my both wives to cancer—that’s a big part of my story, and I’ve fought cancer myself. I’ve been down that road.
JN: I see. You lost your first wife when?
RD: In 1980.
JN: And your second wife?
RD: ‘96.
JN: What was your first job after finishing graduate school?
RD: St. Louis Park High School.
JN: That was in what year?
RD: I started teaching in the fall of ‘48.
JN: What brought you to St. Louis Park or to that job?
RD: I had never heard of St. Louis Park when I was at the U. All of sudden that spring I got a call from the superintendent—offered me the job. I was just amazed. Didn’t have a car at the time, so I took a streetcar out to St. Louis Park, and interviewed, and got the job.
JN: Do you know how the superintendent got your name?
RD: Must have been from the placement bureau, College of Education.
JN: Where were you living at the time that required you to take a streetcar?
RD: My wife and I were living in a trailer court—university trailer court for students—over near the fairgrounds.
JN: What subject did you teach when you first began?
RD: When I first started, I was teaching speech courses. [Phone rings]
JN: Going back to this interview with the superintendent, do you remember what you learned about St. Louis Park given that you hadn’t ever heard of the place before—it was still a village at that point. Do you remember getting an impression what the school district was like that, perhaps, made you decide that you wanted to teach there?
RD: You know, I don’t remember anything about that. I just knew that it was a job. I felt fortunate to get a job that easily, right off the bat. When the superintendent said that he wanted to hire me, oh, it was brilliant of me—my response. I said, “Who? Me?” [Laughs] My starting salary was $3,150.
JN: Did that seem, what, average? Not a lot?
RD: I don’t know. It was money. It was a salary. [Laughs] We rented—my wife and I—rented a double bungalow in St. Louis Park about three blocks from the high school, which was good because I didn’t have a car at that point.
JN: The high school at that point was what became Central Junior High. Am I right?
RD: Right. I was at that building for about eight years before the new building came along.
JN: You began by teaching speech courses.
RD: Yes.
JN: How did that evolve?
RD: As the school grew, it added more speech courses. I forget what year I proposed that we have a theater arts course, but I submitted an outline and it was approved. I then was teaching speech courses and theater arts. The theater arts course was primarily dramatic literature—Shakespeare and kind of a sampling of world drama.
JN: That was still within the school day?
RD: Yes; oh, yes.
JN: How did you become interested in theater?
RD: I think that started way back in my small high school. When I was a junior, I had a woman who directed the plays. I was so fascinated by how she was able to take non-royalty scripts—which means they weren’t really all that great—and she would just rewrite them and add to them, and did such a marvelous job. She was so inventive and innovative that that was an inspiration. I can remember when the war was over, and I was in Germany and we were just waiting to come home, the arms services whatever passed out books. That was the first time that I had ever seen a paperback book. I had a paperback of British plays—a collection of British plays. I read them. I think it was right there, I was so interested in the literature that that’s when I decided I was going to be a theater director in a high school.
JN: So years go by; are there other courses that you teach?
RD: There were several. I created a class on oral interpretation of literature. I had a course on stagecraft—simple stagecraft. My last five years at Park High, I figured, “I need a little change.” So I took on some English courses. I taught English—11th grade English courses; also some creative writing courses.
JN: Over the years, did you come to have an impression about the caliber of teaching at Park High among your colleagues?
RD: I always thought that it was really high caliber. I was so impressed with the English Department. As the English Department grew and more—as the student body got bigger, we had a greater number of teachers. We had something like 29 teachers just in the English Department. That was all the writing, all the English courses, journalism— all that thing. Just extremely high, I thought; yes.
JN: And that’s just the three years—10th, 11th, 12th grade—those number of teachers?
RD: Yes.
JN: Can you recall when it was or how it was that this student body enrollment increased?
RD: It seems to me that it got bigger every year—every year from my first year. I don’t remember that there was any one year that it all of a sudden jumped up. It just gradually got bigger. I remember that when my middle daughter—and she graduated in ‘68—I think it was her class that was the largest graduate class of all of the of St. Louis Park High School graduate classes that I remember. I forget how many students, but it was the top number—that class of ‘68.
JN: Where you aware, at some point—perhaps not your first year when you’re just arriving and adjusting to being a new teacher—but at some point, did you become aware that you had more Jewish kids in your classes?
RD: I can’t say that I was ever really aware of that. Yes, I just was aware of the fact that there was so much brainpower in the student body. Several of the courses that I taught, and definitely the theater arts course because of the Shakespeare and whatnot, that I just felt that I had cream-of-the-crop kids all of the way through.
JN: How was that expressed? How did you know that about these kids?
RD: Just because all these brainpower kids signed up for the courses. Particularly the theater arts because of the literature part of it. In that course, I was never trying to turn out actors. I just—early on I could see what was happening to kids that I had in my play productions. You take a kid, you put him up on a stage in front of a thousand people, and he and she’s got to move around, and words have to come out of his mouth—it’s going to do something to him. I still have kids—“Kids,” I call them—coming back to me and saying how that experience changed their lives—just in confidence-building. That’s the thing I’m most grateful for. I think the most stellar example is, Tom Friedman. I had Tom Friedman in my class. I never had him in a play, but I had him in class. People ask me, “Do I have any students that are big stars in the entertainment world?” Well, I don’t know about that. I hear from so many kids that they’re in communications or they’re in theater, they’re doing this or that, directing and whatnot; but I don’t recall having produced any big stars. No Tom Cruise or [laughs] anybody like that.
JN: It sounds like that wasn’t your goal.
RD: No, it wasn’t.
JN: The plays that you are referring to, this is after school?
RD: Yes.
JN: With each year, the student body enrollment increased; do you remember maybe perhaps aside from hiring more teachers, how the school district or the administration of the high school dealt with the increasing number of kids coming in?
RD: Boy, I don’t know.
JN: For instance where there ever any split days?
RD: At the height of our enrollment, and of course when we were building the new high school, there were two years—and I’m not exactly sure which two years—we had half-day sessions. One year, the senior high would be, like, in the morning until about 12:30, and then there’d be another session, an afternoon session. That session wouldn’t be out until 5:00. And of course by that time—in the wintertime—it was dark. We did that for two years. Because of, we were just so—we had to have more space. They were building the new school.
JN: The new school sounds like that was an example of how the district responded.
RD: Yes, definitely.
JN: When did the new high school open?
RD: Boy. It was either—I’m not sure—fall of ‘58 or ‘59. This summer there’s going to be a reunion of—I think it’s August 25—this is a new thing: an all school. Anyhow, I’ve got three people who were in . . . The fall that the school was new, we did Hamlet. And I’ve got three people who were in that production, the Hamlet, the Horatio and one other. We’ve already made dinner plans. It could be the fall of ‘58, but I’m not positive.
JN: Then the new high school opens, classes are continuing to—or there are more families moving—more students are coming to the high school. You are aware of that each year.
RD: Yes. Then of course, there was the time when we had the new high school, but then it still was getting bigger. We had to build that circular—here’s one wing of the old and here’s the other, and they built this circle building; more classroom space. I forget what year that was.
JN: In general, how racially diverse was the high school?
RD: Well, hard to say. I can remember vaguely, in some of the last years that I was there, there were students—Jewish students—who had come from Russia, moved to this country, and attended high school. It was not a big influx at all. I can remember all—of the kids that I had in drama, I can remember only one black student. I had her in a play. That’s about all I remember.
JN: Even into the early ‘80s, before you retire, there really aren’t more African Americans who have come into the school?
RD: No, that all happened after I left. I don’t really know to what extent black students moved into the area. Once I retired, I retired.
JN: What have you heard about that?
RD: Just that there were some black students. That’s about it. I don’t really remember.
JN: Do you have any memories of how the high school—the St. Louis Park High School—compared to other area high schools in nearby suburbs, like Hopkins, Edina?
RD: I vaguely remember . . . At the time, we went through two or three or four years of the drug scene. I can remember going down into the main entrance of the high school and every once in a while smelling marijuana. Over that two or three or four year period, it gradually got worse. As I said at the time, “Well it crept up the stairs. Now it’s up in the upper hallway.” And I can still remember in a writing course—in a creative writing course—working in my classroom and walking among the seats, and I can still remember smelling the marijuana off of the kids. Of course that was all tied in with the Vietnam War. We had—I don’t know what it was called, some kind of a “walk out” or a “sit in” or something—where one day, kids all walked out of the school. That hadn’t been—as far as I can remember, that wasn’t happening in other schools. At the time I thought, “We’re about a year ahead.” There was something going on at the university, and a lot of our kids kind of got the idea that they were going to do that, and they did that. It wasn’t happening, to my knowledge, in other high schools. We were about a year ahead of that. And I at the time I thought, “Our kids are so darn smart, they’re aware of these things.” Feeling their wild oats and whatnot.
JN: Were you aware of any . . .
RD: But then, and this was kind of a problem; but I swear, the fall of ‘73 the Vietnam War was coming to an end, and that fall when we started school, it was like that whole rebellion kind of thing was all over with. The teachers, we just thought, “Well, we’re going to face another year like the two or three that we’ve had.” We were five or six weeks into that school year, and we hadn’t talked about this. It was almost like we didn’t want to talk about more of the same. But all of a sudden we realized, “That’s over with!” It came to an end. That whole rebellious thing.
JN: Were you aware ever of any other students from other communities, say, Golden Valley or Hopkins, coming to Park High through open enrollment?
RD: I can remember when I first started at Park, we had quite a few students who—and I forget what year it happened—but, they left Park. They left Park because they were going to school in Golden Valley. We had students that changed; I don’t know what happened, if it was a new high school in Golden Valley or whatever, but all of a sudden
the Golden Valley kids were no longer there. I don’t know how many, but I do remember that it happened.
JN: What you are saying, just so that I understand, is that there were kids from Golden Valley who had been coming to Park High and then went back—and then left?
RD: Yes. I’m not sure of this, but I’m just kind of wondering if the same thing happened with kids who moved back or were going back to Edina? Seems to me we had students from Park who no longer attended Park High School, but then moved back—I don’t know what happened. The superintendent that hired me, I forget what year, became the superintendent of Edina High School. That was just as far as the superintendent is concerned. I just don’t remember if we had students that stopped Park and started going to Edina. I could be all wrong about that. Maybe somebody else will know about that, and I don’t.
JN: Do you know about when that superintendent left and moved to Edina?
RD: He was our superintendent my first year. Let’s see. He hired me—his name was Domian, Superintendent Domian. He hired me, but when I started teaching that first year, we had a new superintendent—Enestvedt. And Domian became the superintendent in Edina. I said, “Enestvedt and I came to Park the same year.” We visited back and forth, while he was there, about that.
JN: Did you and your wife and I’m imaging maybe your daughters have come along, move into another home at some point?
RD: At the end of my first year of teaching, we bought a house. We were able to buy a house. Over near—not very far from Elliot School, which was one of the elementary schools.
JN: Located where?
RD: Well, just two or three blocks off of Cedar Lake Road. 116th Street. 6606 West 116th Street. Yes.
JN: I think it was maybe West 16th street.
RD: Yes, OK.
JN: I’m sorry, give me that address again.
RD: I think—6606 West 116th Street.
JN: It was off of Cedar Lake Road and . . . ?
RD: Near Elliot School—Elliot Elementary School.
JN: Which . . . ?
RD: Is on Cedar Lake Road.
JN: Just east of Louisiana? Am I remembering correctly?
RD: Yes.
JN: How long did you live in that home?
RD: I think we moved to Glenhurst in St. Louis Park—I think we were in that house 13 years.
JN: Then, you were saying you moved to Glenhurst?
RD: No, Huntington. That was kind of on the east side.
JN: Where on Huntington?
RD: Do I remember the address? It was a block-and-a-half off of Excelsior Boulevard. 1642 Huntington Avenue, yes.
JN: So this would have been south of Excelsior?
RD: Yes.
JN: You moved there—was the house a step up, in terms of size and . . . ?
RD: Yes, we needed more room. My wife didn’t drive, but she wanted to be near a bus line, because she went back to teaching.
JN: Where did she teach?
RD: In North Minneapolis. I forget the name of the school. It was a really rough school.
JN: What grade level?
RD: Eighth grade English.
JN: A couple of North Side junior highs would have been Willard [Willard was an elementary school. —Ed.] or Lincoln?
RD: No. I forget the name.
JN: About when did she start teaching there?
RD: I don’t remember what year. Oh, yeah, Ok. It was—when was Kennedy assassinated?
JN: ‘63.
RD: About that year. Because I remember I came home from school that afternoon; my wife wasn’t home yet. We were having a heater installed in the back room, and he hadn’t heard the news yet. This was about three o’clock. I walked in and told him. He was there installing a—he hadn’t heard the news.
JN: In your new home.
RD: Yes.
JN: So it sounds like she started working when you moved into the Huntington house—around that time.
RD: Yes.
JN: In either of those neighborhoods, off of Cedar Lake Road or on Huntington, were you aware of having Jewish neighbors?
RD: No, I really wasn’t. In the Huntington neighborhood, these were mainly families whose kids had attended high school like in the ‘50s. Their kids were already graduating or had graduated. They were all pretty much the same age families; they had been there. The house that we bought, the man of the family. . . ’58 . . . well, anyhow, in the late ‘50s their kids were in high school. Their kids were gone by the time we moved in.
JN: To Huntington—that house?
RD: Yes. In the first house—you know, these were modest homes. Veterans coming out of the war; they were small homes, new—all of them new—but families that had just started their family life, set up their household, started having kids. I think maybe where one Jewish family. . . and we all kind of socialized.
JN: Were there a lot of kids on the block there?
RD: Oh, Yes. We had kind of a cul-de-sac. Everybody had little kids. We called it “Fertile Valley.” [Laughs] It was a wonderful place because there was no through traffic. Kids could play down in this on their trikes. In back of us there was kind of a swampy area. I remember one time, some kids got lost—some kids from the neighborhood—little kids got lost out in this swamp. The parents got together [laughs] and went hunting for their kids out in the weeds.
JN: Going back to the school, I’ve heard people describe certain changes that happened at Park High or in the school district in general around holidays. At some point it was no longer Christmas—was celebrated in some way in the classrooms, but Christmas and Chanukah; no longer the big tree. Do you remember anything like that?
RD: I think just vaguely when they kind of put a stop to the Christmas tree thing. . . . I’m just very vague on this whole thing. Griebenow, who had the chorus, the choir, they didn’t sing, they didn’t do Christmas songs, Christmas music. And yet, I can remember he had three big productions that he kind of alternated, and one of them always was The Messiah. I don’t remember that he ever stopped doing that. He did that, and then another one, and another one; and then he’d go back to the first one. He kind of alternated among the three. I just don’t remember that it was any big deal.
You know, I do have to say somewhere along the line, how supportive—all of the parents were supportive of education. I can certainly remember how supportive the Jewish families were of the arts. That was one of my main concerns. I can remember when we did Fiddler. I got notes from three different parents saying that they certainly realized that I didn’t have to be Jewish to know how to do Fiddler. [Laughs]
JN: Do you remember what year you did that?
RD: No, I don’t. I think it would have been the early ‘70s, but beyond that I don’t remember.
JN: Say a little bit more about how Jewish parents were supportive of your programs.
RD: All the parents participated in this, but I had the idea that—we go through the school day, I found that it didn’t work very well. Whenever I was doing a show, I would spend about three months—we would spend about three months—on a Shakespeare because it was such a big job. I found out early on that it didn’t work, really, to say, OK, school is out; the kids go home; and I expect them to come back at seven o’clock for rehearsal. That didn’t work. So we started: OK, school is out; I’d give the kids about 20 minutes after school to do whatever they needed to do; and then we started rehearsal. Then the parents— at about 5:30—the parents would bring supper. We’d stop for supper, maybe take 45 minutes. The parents brought the main dish and maybe a salad. I’d get the milk from the school cafeteria, and maybe some little ice cream cups. Then we would go back to rehearsing. I could send—the kids could go home then at about 7, so they still had an evening. It wasn’t that struggle to get the kids to come back after going home. The suppers just worked! And the parents all participated. They took turns. We’d eat in the cafeteria. The lady who headed the food service would be a little unhappy once in a while. [Laughs] The kids wouldn’t have food fights, but it would be kind of messy and we couldn’t clean up the place as much as the lady would’ve liked. We tried to not make too much of a mess. So I was constantly fending off complaints about that. But it just worked. It just worked. It just worked. The kids liked it, the parents—I never had any kind of opposition from parents. They’d come in, and bring the food in, and set it up, and at 5:30 we’d go in and eat.
JN: For a three-month long production . . .
RD: That would be for a Shakespeare. For a musical, almost as long a time. For straight plays, five or six weeks.
JN: Would this be every day after school?
RD: Yes.
JN: So this was quite a commitment that the students were making. And the parents.
RD: It had to be. I insisted. And they understood—the kids understood right at the get go that if you’re going to be in this play you have to commit to it. I remember one boy that wanted to play—this was when soccer came along, and he wanted to play soccer. He was headed for a lead in a play. Well, I said, “Randy, you’ve got to make up your mind. You can’t do both. Because we’re not playing second. You play soccer if you want to play soccer. That’s good. But you can’t do both.” As more activities came along— sports activities came along for girls—that became a problem as far as the girls are concerned. When soccer came around and maybe gymnastics—it was good for the kids to have all of these other things they could do besides football and basketball and baseball. It certainly was good for girls. I forget what sport it was, but the girls just had one thing they could do. Was it Title IX, for girls, that made it possible for girls to have more athletic activities. That was good.
JN: So your example of Randy, letting Randy know that—he or she . . . ?
RD: He.
[BREAK]
RD: So I retired—maybe you want this too, but let me tell you a little about it first. I retired in 1984. That fall, I got a call from one of the principals because the other person who was going to—was still directing—had a squabble over salary increase. He had chosen to do the show, A Chorus Line. He had a cast; he had already cast it. But then, early that fall, he quit because of this salary squabble. So the assistant principal called me. Here, I had just retired, and I thought I was retired! He wanted to know, would I come back and direct Chorus Line? Well, sure. Five kids quit the cast because of their loyalty. I don’t want to mention his name. His name was Pete. Five kids quit because of their feelings for Pete. So I had to recast five kids.
I can remember—there were parents of the kids in the cast, three Jewish couples. Oh my gosh—they headed up the costume crew. [Laughs] We took over the Home Ec department, the sewing machines. Those parents built all these costumes. And they were elaborate! They were just so elaborate. Of course, the Home Ec teachers [laughs] weren’t very happy because of the fact that we came in. But they couldn’t really say no, because they didn’t own the Home Ec rooms or the sewing machines. But those
parents just stuck with that and—beautiful costumes! And it was three Jewish couples that headed that. They had a lot of help from other people, other parents. I forget the names, but it was three Jewish couples that headed that crew.
JN: Was that your last production at Park?
RD: Yes, it was. But, see, I was no longer teaching. I thought, well, that will be not so bad. I’ll just go to school about 2:30 when school was out and then do the rehearsal. I found . . . I was going to the school at 9:30 in the morning. . . . There were something like seventeen kids who were characters in this Chorus Line production, and it was one of the best directing experiences I ever had. I would take these kids out of study hall, not their classes, but their study hall. They’d come down—maybe you’ll want this. [Laughs] They’d come down to the auditorium, and I would work with them on a one-to-one basis. During that whole time, I was able to work with each kid three times just on their characterization. That’s the kind of role they had—they each had their own individual story. And, of course, all of these characters were striving to be in the production, actually. Did you get that or don’t you need that? [Laughs]
JN: It is on.
RD: Oh! Oh really! [Laughs] OK. Kind of messy, but it was a great experience.
JN: You mentioned salaries and salary disputes. Did you feel that you were paid well as a teacher there? And did teachers, in general, feel like they were paid adequately?
RD: My salary grew every year. I can remember the first $3,150, and it grew a little every year. I can remember it took me four to five years as a teacher to be able to have a $5 bill in my wallet. Then it got to the point where, because there was a pretty active teachers union—and I was on the salary committee for I don’t know how long—I was able to get a raise in salary as far as my play production was concerned, because it was happening in other schools. I got better pay for directing than I had for a lot of the early years, so that was an improvement as far as my salary was concerned.
JN: It was happening in other schools? In other nearby school districts?
RD: Yes. I can remember knowing. I had a good friend who ran the theater department in Robbinsdale. I kind of knew what he was getting, and so forth. It helped.
JN: Do you remember ever having a teachers strike?
RD: I can remember three. I can remember participating in three strikes in that whole 36 years that I was at Park High. I can remember walking, with a sign.
JN: What were they about—those issues?
RD: Increase in salaries, primarily. We had a teacher by the name of John Loegering, who has now passed. He was one of the leaders in getting better salaries. It kind of started out . . . the men had families, and the whole union struggle was kind of, at the beginning, held back by the some of the women teachers, the single women teachers, who weren’t as—they didn’t have a family to support, and they were a little less supportive then the men, we men who had families and kids to feed and so forth and so on. That gradually faded away, that whole business of kind of holding back on the part of female faculty members. It got to the point where it was fair and equalized.
JN: Do you remember whether neighboring school districts—faculty also went on strike?
RD: I don’t remember when they did or if they did. But there, again, I felt that St. Louis Park was kind of a leader in trying to better teachers’ salaries. Maybe because I was right in the middle of it that I had that feeling. I’m not sure. I do remember one time, oh, half a dozen of us who were working for better salaries; we went to Richfield and had supper at a lady’s’ house, a teacher. Their group was also working to increase salaries. That little gathering was to just kind of get together on, “What are you going to do?” and “What are you doing in your union?” I know the Robbinsdale drama teacher—Swanson his name was; they were right up there, too, in terms of working for better teachers’ salaries. But I’m not really aware of others. I know that I got my impetus for improving my directing salaries because the Robbinsdale guy made that happen for him.
JN: How did you continue to develop professionally on the theater arts end? Did you over the years take workshops? Were their conferences that you went to? Was it all personally driven?
RD: Well, I didn’t go back to school, but . . . the whole theater scene around Minneapolis was growing. The Guthrie came along in ‘63. At the time that the Guthrie came along—my advisor at the university was Dr. Whiting, and he worked with Guthrie to establish the Guthrie Theater here. And many of the suburbs had community theaters. That whole thing was developing, and it kind of started in the mid-50s. About 1955, we had the St. Louis Park Community Theater. I was a cofounder of that. It just seemed like the suburbs—there was a ring of . . . first-ring suburbs—well, they all had a community theater. I did some directing at the Bloomington Civic Theater before we had a community theater in St. Louis Park. Then, somewhere along the line—early ‘70s—I started taking students to New York during spring break. We would see five shows. I’d take from 60 to 75 students to New York to see shows, plus all the other standard tours and what not. I learned so much about theater just doing that. A cofounder, the other guy, had gotten his training at Yale, and I learned so much from him. We cofounded the St. Louis Park Community Theater. Stan, he was just so terrific at the technical part of
theater: the lighting, the stagecraft, the building, the painting. I learned so much from him. It was what I, kind of, learned; and self taught; and what I picked up on my own.
JN: What’s Stan’s last name?
RD: Stan Cloth. C-L-O-T-H.
JN: Were you the first teacher at Park High to bring students for the spring theater tour to New York?
RD: Yes. I was the first one to do that—to do New York. There were a couple of other Social Studies teachers that had taken students on trips, maybe to Washington DC or what not. I can remember going—when I had the idea of starting those, I went to this one guy—I forget his name now—but I said, “Ok, what do I do? How should I do this?” And he said, “Keep them busy. Keep them busy.” I can remember during the week that we’d be gone—there were many Jewish kids that were along on those trips. A lot of these kids had relatives living in New York. I would allow them one half-day off, so they could get together with their relatives. I had to draw the line; that’s all it could be, because I wanted to keep track of these kids.
I can remember I’d always have a parents meeting before we went, and those parents all knew—most of these trips I had another teacher couple go with my wife and I to help with the chaperone. I made all these parents understand that we will do a final bed check—we’d go to a show and they may go eat someplace. We’re going to do a bed check at 12:30, and those kids will have to be there. And if they’re not there, we’ll call you, because we need our sleep too. We’re not going to do a bed check after 12:30. So, the parents knew that they. . .
JN: When you had this idea, you proposed it apparently, I’m assuming, to the high school administration; were you supported by them from the get-go?
RD: I don’t remember that I had to get their permission at all. We just went ahead and did it. We just did it. I can remember one time—got to New York and I had forgotten the tickets! UGH! I couldn’t believe it. Called the principal; I told him exactly where they were. They were in a box at the school; I forget where, but they were locked up. It was Bertil Johnson. He went and he got the tickets, and put them on a plane, [laughs] sent them to New York, so we had them. [Laughs]
JN: High Drama.
RD: Yes, Right! [Laughs]
JN: Going back to the St. Louis Park Civic Theater, when did you cofound that? When did that begin?
RD: About ’59 . . . yes, ‘59.
JN: Where was it located?
RD: We did it in the high school. The problem then was the high school was getting bigger; the population was getting bigger. So it got to be more and more difficult to schedule a community theater production, along with the high school drama program, and the chorus, and the band activities. We got to the point where we could no longer use the high school stage, so we had to find other places. I can remember one year, the community theater hired a guy to look around St. Louis Park to see if we could find some other venue, and we couldn’t. So the community theater, after about 10 years, just kind of petered out. Somebody started up another one a few years later and it struggled on over at Elliot School just off of Cedar Lake Road, but I had nothing to do with that. I was all done with that at that point.
JN: Do you remember—I‘m switching topics here a little bit again—do you remember there being any conflicts, tensions between Jewish and non-Jewish students?
RD: I don’t remember anything like that. I just don’t. I don’t remember any kind of problem like that. You know, just a student body that got along.
JN: You’ve been gone from teaching there for over 25 years.
RD: About 28 years.
JN: Do you have any sense of how St. Louis Park High School is regarded today? Say, academically?
RD: I don’t know what they’re called, but I know—I’ve read and I’ve heard—that they’ve gotten awards on excellency. I haven’t heard like in the last year or so; but I’ve heard that that kind of thing is happening. I don’t know what the student body is like now. I just don’t.
JN: When did you move out here?
RD: I moved out here in ‘83. I taught one more year, and then I retired.
JN: What led you to move here?
RD: My first wife had died. I retired early. I retired when I was 62. I just felt burned out. Sold my house in St. Louis Park on Huntington and found this.
JN: Was this complex new at the time?
RD: No, it was just beginning. The first building on the corner was the model. This was the second building. In this complex—I’m on the board here now, as of last November.
I’m the oldest one in the complex, and I’ve been here the longest. [Laughs] We have a wonderful board. The woman behind me, the president; and another senior lady is the treasurer; and a couple of younger fellows—I call them kids, and they’re both about 50. [Laughs] Just super people. I’m the member-at-large. I looked that up on the Internet. What does a member-at-large do? He has no power and no responsibility. [Laughs] So I am always trying to find things to do so I can feel legitimate.
JN: You’re there to advise, I imagine.
RD: And vote in case here is a tie. No, I do landscaping work. I like to dig in the dirt. I’ve surveyed all 56 units. We’ve organized driveway improvements projects over fours years. In fact we’re going to start, right about now, repairing—completely redoing four of the driveways that are in the worst condition. This whole project is going to be four years, and I did the surveying.
JN: You mentioned to me that there is a—I think it’s an all-school reunion coming up in August?
RD: Yes.
JN: You’re planning to go to that?
RD: Yes, I don’t know anything about it, but I keep expecting that I. . . Do you know about this?
JN: I’ve heard about it. But what I’m wondering is—and you mentioned that you already have plans to get together with some former students—do you get together in any regular way, or maybe infrequently, with teachers from Park High? Former teachers?
RD: Because we’re all getting older, or maybe old, for about 30 years we had a lunch group: guys that would get together. First, it started out breakfast, and then it turned to lunch. Then somehow the wives got involved and ruined the whole thing. [Laughs] Really just in the last year, that lunch group has kind of faded away. Also a dinner group. That group . . . we would get together maybe four times a year. Wonderful dinners. Best food I’ve ever eaten. We’ve decided that from now on as long as we can keep it going, we’re just going to meet once a year at a restaurant. The last time we met was at the Mill Valley Kitchens in St. Louis Park. France and Excelsior Boulevard. It’s kind of a new place; really pretty nice.
JN: Great. Well, thank you very much.
RD: You mean to say you can use all this? [Laughs]
[BREAK]
RD: . . . His daughter is on the train and we’re pulling out of the station. This father is kind of running along beside the side of the train. He didn’t want his daughter to become ill or get a cold.
JN: This is a Jewish father?
RD: Yes. So he says, “Harriet! Don’t sweat! Don’t sweat!” [Laughs] It was so funny.
JN: And that was the first year that you took kids . . . ?
RD: The first year. I think we did this about a dozen years. Somewhere along the line, we would take the train to Chicago and then fly. It got to the point where we flew the whole thing. But that first year, the train and the soot! [Laughs] I don’t know if it was a dirty train or what have you, but we got to New York and we just felt gritty! [Laughs] It was awful. But, it was wonderful, so much fun.
[Break]
RD: My hometown of Barrett, Minnesota has a community theater. . . It has been in existence for about 30 years. I’ve directed twelve of the shows. It’s a dinner theater situation in a hall that was built during 1934—FDR and WPA and so forth. I’ve done Fiddler up there twice. You should see Fiddler in my [laughs] Norwegian hometown. I swear it’s been one of the most popular shows. I did the first one in ‘86 and the other one... It’s just the “biggy” in terms of the popularity of the shows that they’ve done. I want to get something. . .
JN: Do you think that maybe it relates because Fiddler is about life in a shtetl? A small village?
RD: Could be. The population of my home town has been about 350. That’s about it. It’s just been a big success—a huge success.
[END